Scottish Government

Dear Colleague

Significant Incident Reviews Guidance - Consultation

Attached is a copy of the draft guidance on Significant Incident Reviews developed by a Working Group commissioned by the Child Protection Reform Programme Steering Group (membership attached).

Protecting children and young people is an inter-agency and inter-disciplinary responsibility. While it is the social work services who largely lead on the discharge of local authorities' legal responsibilities in respect of safeguarding children, any agency or profession may be the starting point for the review process detailed here. Local inter-agency Child Protection Committees ( CPCs) work on behalf of the Chief Officers in health, police and the local authority in their area and have a key role to play in ensuring agencies work together effectively to ensure children get the help they need when they need it. This guidance is primarily targeted at CPCs and their role in helping ensure appropriate action is taken as well as being aimed at those who need to initiate action and contribute to the review process.

As well as input from the Working Group there was considerable discussion of the draft guidance with a number of groups earlier in the year which has contributed to the draft attached.

The purpose of the guidance is to put in place a consistent, transparent and structured approach to these reviews building on the practices and protocols already in place to ensure we learn the lessons, locally and nationally, from such reviews. The guidance focuses on the structure and process for the review procedure, not on the detail of who, what or how the necessary case information is accessed, shared and presented locally. This is primarily an issue for each area and each case and is being addressed locally as this work is taken forward.

Over the consultation period, we will be considering underlying legal issues particularly in relation to information sharing powers and confidentiality and what the guidance might usefully say in respect of such issues to support local action.

Responses are required by 8 November and should be sent to:

Or to the child protection reform programme mailbox : cprp@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

If you have any queries or comments on the consultation process, please contact Gaynor Davenport as above on 0131 244 4906.

This consultation, and all other Scottish Executive consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Executive website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 to find out where your nearest public internet access point is.

The Scottish Executive now has an email alert system for consultations ( SEconsult: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/seconsult.aspx). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). SEconsult complements, but in no way replaces SE distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SE consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete and return the Respondent Information Form as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.

All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Executive is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

Next steps in the process

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public, these will be made available to the public in the Scottish Executive Library by 22 November 2006. We will check all responses where agreement to publish has been given for any potentially defamatory material before logging them in the library or placing them on the website. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SE Library on 0131 244 4565. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next ?

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us develop the final guidance for Significant Incident Reviews.

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to me at the above address.

Yours sincerely

Gaynor Davenport

Annex A: Respondent Information Form: A Consultation on Draft Guidance for Significant Incident Reviews
Annex B: Membership of the Child Death and Significant Case Review Group
Annex C: Significant Incident Review Consultation List